The University of Arizona Press
Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Time: 10-11 a.m., CDT
Virtual event: Tickets are free and can be found here
Brenda Sendejo will launch her book, Chicana Spiritual Activism: Making Change Making Soul, in a virtual event on Tuesday, October 20. Join for an hour of ceremony, story, and plática. The event includes a few of the women featured in the book: Susana R. Almanza, Inés Hernández-Ávila, and Rev. Virginia Marie Rincon. This event will include a reading, and signed copies can be purchased here.
Sendejo is a cultural anthropologist, consultant, and scholar-practitioner of spiritual activism. For two decades, she has collaborated with movement-era Chicanas in Texas, documenting their spiritual activism and illuminating its continued relevance for contemporary struggles.
About the book:
This book explores the profound impact of spiritual activism within the Chicana feminist movement in Texas. It illuminates how a cohort of Texas Chicanas embraced spiritual activism in pursuit of social change during the movement and into the present day.
The book draws on an array of qualitative methodologies—including interviews, autoethnography, testimonio, pláticas, and archival analysis—to develop what the author formulates as “methodologies of the spirit.” Focusing on the lived experiences, histories, and spiritual activism of sixteen Chicanas/Tejanas, Sendejo shows how these trailblazing women confronted the enduring impacts and repercussions of colonial legacies in Texas through their involvement in movement initiatives such as electoral politics through Mujeres Por La Raza, the cultural arts movement, developing Chicana feminist thought, and the establishment of bilingual education and Chicana/o studies programs.
